Wood Brothers Racing Anticipates More Progress Heading into Texas

Wood Brothers Racing Anticipates More Progress Heading into Texas

Harrisburg,NC ( October 30,2008)-Bill Elliott in the Wood Brothers Racing no. 21 Little Debbie Ford Fusion will head to Texas for the Dickies 500 on Sunday, November 2nd with the confidence that the team has progressed in the last half of the season.

Within the past five races, crew chief David Hyder has experienced tremendous improvements on and off the race track. The team looks forward to bringing a brand new race car to the 1.5 mile quad-oval. “The guys have been working super hard in the shop and giving us the right equipment to go to the racetrack. I think we’ve shown improvement over the last five or six weeks. We haven’t gotten to qualify, but all in all, we’ve been competitive and we’re right where we need to be,” said Hyder.

At the track, he commented on the road crew and their advancements, “Unfortunately the way we had that problem in Atlanta wrecking, we didn’t get the chance we needed. The guys working on road crew have been working hard at giving us what we need with changes in the car and I can’t say enough about the team and how much they’ve progressed for the last month and a half,” said Hyder.

Because Atlanta and Texas are similar, Hyder plans on taking what the team learned in Atlanta and building on that for this weekend in Texas. “We learned a lot of new things at Atlanta and because the loads are about the same at Texas as Atlanta, we should be able to use close to the same set up.” He added that the key to running well in Texas is to tackle the banking issue in turn two. “The transition off the banking off [turn] two falls out from under the car; where at Atlanta and Charlotte, the banking stays progressive off the corner so, you just have to watch out and not get too tight off two. You need to be able to get in to [turn] three pretty hard and roll the middle in [turns] three and four. We’ll be looking for that change off two and we’ll be making changes toward that but, still being able to get in the center of three and four.”

During the last three weeks, qualifying has been cancelled due to inclement weather which has placed the no. 21 in the 37th starting spot for those races. With no threat of rain for this weekend in Texas, Hyder is looking forward to qualifying and the opportunity to improve on the starting position. “It would be great if we had a top 20 after qualifying but, I look for even something better than that.” He added, “I’m just real happy where we were in Atlanta for race set up. Springs wise, it shows to be better for qualifying so, I hope it doesn’t rain, now that we’ve had 10 weekends of rained out qualifying. I hope we definitely get to qualify and improve our starting position.”

Overall, the team is excited about heading to Texas with hopes to have the opportunity to show the improvements during qualifying, practice and have a top run during the race.